Urgent: Sign USDA Petition Demanding Stronger Regulations for Genetically Engineered Crops!
The petition is below. Click link above to sign petition! Monday, Nov 24, 2008 is the last day!Why is this important???? Once again big brother is telling us what to do. You should have the right to choose NOT to feed your family and animals genetically modified foods. These crops that have been genetically modified could cause serious health problems. Do you want to do that to YOUR family? There needs to be full disclosure of products containing these genetically modified crops. I will not grow or eat or feed these crops to my family and animals. Without legislation, the big corporations will sneak this into our lives. WE MUST NOT LET THEM! Stand up and be heard now! Read the petition below and click the link above to sign the petition.
Docket No. APHIS-2008-0023
Regulatory Analysis and Development
PPD, APHIS, Station 3A-03.8
4700 River Road Unit 118
Riverdale, MD 20737-1238.
Re: Docket No. APHIS-2008-0023, Importation, Interstate Movement, and Release into the Environment of Certain
Genetically Engineered Organisms.
I am very concerned about the risks genetically engineered crops--especially those engineered to produce drugs and industrial chemicals--pose to human health, family farmers, wildlife, and the environment. I urge USDA to close the gaping loopholes in its proposed rules, and put stronger--not weaker--regulations in place. In particular:
1)Please follow the advice of the National Academy of Sciences and make genetic engineering the trigger for USDA oversight so that ALL experimental GE crops are properly regulated. This approach is scientifically sound, administratively efficient, and more protective of public health, the environment, and the interests of farmers. Eliminate loopholes that exempt any GE crop that has not undergone a determination of non-regulated status from USDA regulatory oversight.
2)Please do NOT incorporate the "Low Level Presence"
policy in the final rule. Instead, make zero presence of
experimental GE crops in food and feed your management goal, and gear your implementing regulations to achieve it as fully as possible. In particular, make all field trials of experimental GE crops subject to strict gene containment standards at least as stringent as those now applied to pharmaceutical-producing GE crops.
3)Please reconsider your "business as usual" pharma crop policy, and instead adopt one of two alternatives you proposed in the Draft Environmental Impact Statement - a simple ban on outdoor cultivation of all pharmaceutical-producing crops, or at least pharmaceutical-producing food crops - to best protect public health and the environment.
4)Please regulate as necessary pesticide-promoting,
herbicide-tolerant GE crops in order to address the rise in pesticide use these crops have fostered, and to mitigate the growing threat posed by herbicide-resistant weeds to farmers and the interests of American agriculture.
5)Remove any preemption clause that bars state and local authorities from enacting laws or regulations to control GE crops as they best see fit.
Stumble It!
